What would a post-xenophobic politics look like?

The day after the murder of the MP Jo Cox, her husband
Brendan circulated a
paper he had written a few weeks previously on politicians’ failure to
tackle the subject of immigration. There he argued that efforts “to neuter [far
right populists] by taking their ground and aping their rhetoric” had backfired.
“Far from closing down the debates, these steps legitimise [their] views,
reinforce their frames and pull the debate further to the extremes”. In the
hours after his wife’s death, Cox released a statement
in which he urged us to “unite to fight against the hatred that killed her”.
Let’s start thinking constructively about how we can do that.

The false frame

The overall framing of the national debate on
immigration is that it’s a problem, and that the more immigrants, the bigger
the problem and the bigger the burden on society. It’s a frame, rather than
just a contestable opinion, because it’s not only the political right – or, in
the current EU debate, the Leave camp – that say it. Their opponents accept it
as well.

Back in 2004, the current deputy leader of the Labour party,
Tom
Watson, was responsible for an election leaflet that said “Labour is on
your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers”. Former
Labour home secretary David Blunkett has said repeatedly that
Britain is being “swamped”
by foreigners, recently predicting
“an explosion” if Roma migrants don’t “change [their] culture”. The consistent
stance on immigration from most of the right and centre of the parliamentary
Labour party is that it can control
‘the numbers’ better than the Conservatives. Watson has since expressed regret
for his past actions, though last week he contradicted his party leadership by calling for
tighter restrictions on immigration – again, reinforcing the frames of the
anti-immigrant right.

So the first step toward a post-xenophobic politics has
to be pointing out, again and again, that the ‘burdensome immigration’ frame is
a false one. Recent
research produced by the London School of Economics (confirming earlier
findings from University College London) shows that recent EU migrants “pay
more in taxes than they use in public services”, have not pushed down wages or
reduced job opportunities, and provide a boost to the economy through their
purchasing of goods and services.

Therefore, every statement and argument made by a
politician or commentator that is based on the false frame needs to be met with
an immediate and direct correction. Not only is the current debate actively
dangerous, but its entire basis is factually wrong. We need to say so (while
also pointing out that judging human beings as economic units is slightly
grotesque to begin with).

But this is insufficient by itself. The second stage has
to be showing that concerns about jobs, housing and public services can all be
addressed without irrelevant diversions into immigration policy. People deserve
a tangible sense that their problems can be solved, not just to be told that
they’ve been misled about the causes.

The real
‘legitimate concerns’

On jobs, it is our bosses, not immigrants, who cut our pay
or lay us off. So government should both legislate for and properly enforce a genuine
living wage, and encourage stronger trade unions to champion people in their work
place and protect them from their employers. More fundamentally, the failed
Thatcher-Blair-Cameron economic model needs to be replaced with one that
produces good, skilled, secure jobs, not poor, unskilled, insecure ones.
This is no small task, requiring a highly developed political and policy
strategy.

On affordable housing, a massive building programme is obviously
needed, as well as compulsory purchase orders for unoccupied
properties, and a crackdown on parasitical landlords. Funding public
services adequately to meet the demands of a growing and ageing population can,
like the housebuilding programme, be paid for through the added tax revenue and
economic activity produced by immigration, as well as more progressive taxation
for higher earners, and dramatic action on tax havens, evasion and avoidance.

The real culprits, plainly, are not immigrants but tax
dodgers, unscrupulous landlords, and exploitative
bosses. And this is the new frame: an economy rigged in favour of a
privileged elite. Of course, those in the old New Labour tradition will
complain that this is ‘anti-business’ and ‘anti-aspiration’. Perhaps. But this
framing, unlike theirs, does at least have the redeeming feature of being both
factually accurate and offering concrete solutions.

Another right-populist frame requiring challenge is the caricatured
dichotomy (again, parroted
by the centre-left) of ordinary people with their ‘legitimate concerns’
versus a pro-migration, metropolitan elite. In reality, it is elite residents
of Westminster and Fleet Street, above all, who have promoted
or appeased anti-immigrant politics, abrogating their responsibilities as
custodians of the national conversation, colluding in the misleading
of the public, and spreading fear, hatred and division in doing so. And it
is their friends, proprietors and donors in the economic elite who have been
the prime beneficiaries, escaping the blame for economic exploitation and
inequality in the long aftermath of the financial crash. Ordinary people, in
the absence of any serious policies to materially improve their living
standards, have not been well served by this misdirection.

And ordinary people, in any case, are a varied group. In
London, where migration is at its highest, where deep poverty persists, and
where the housing crisis is perhaps at its most acute, UKIP finds itself
repeatedly and resoundingly rejected at the ballot box. The fact that Jeremy
Corbyn’s constituency is both one of the most diverse and one of the most
deprived in the capital has not stopped his less thoughtful opponents branding
him as an out of touch metropolitan. Perhaps they should instead ask him how he
has managed to thrive as a local MP in this environment.

British prejudice

Finally, we will need to confront the fact that
antipathy towards immigrants is not always a proxy for legitimate economic
concerns. Geographically, anti-immigrant sentiment is at its highest where
the number of immigrants is lowest, suggesting that prejudice and
ignorance, rather than direct experience, is a significant part of the picture.
This also indicates that attitudes change when immigrants become real people –
friends, colleagues, family members – rather than a dehumanised,
inundating
mass.

The disproportionately white Anglo-Saxon residents of
Westminster and Fleet Street may find this hard to believe, but Britain has a
rich and well established tradition of racism and xenophobia. The idea that
these feelings might be widespread,
rather than marginal, is only discounted by those who have never been subjected to them first hand.
Tackling this issue will be harder, and deserves to be the subject of a
separate article. But a first step would be acknowledging its existence, and a
second might be for public figures to direct their righteous indignation toward
the fact of prejudice, rather than the accusation of it.

Out of the darkness,
or further in?

When a narrative takes hold wherein the nation is
threatened by a designated out-group, some form of darkness tends to follow
close behind. We don’t exactly need more historical proof of this. Reflexive
blaming of the out-group, painting them as the root cause of
all social ills is a familiar part of the script, as is their
stigmatisation as a security,
sexual
or public health
threat. Thus dehumanised, the out-group becomes uniquely vulnerable to
mistreatment, including violence,
as do any of those deemed “traitors” for siding with them (in our case, the
imaginary pro-migrant, metropolitan elite).

The choice before
us then is clear enough. We can continue on the present course, knowing both from
historical and immediate experience where this is leading. Or we can break the
frame, change the narrative, and push back hard against anyone still following
the script that brought us here. Britain has begun to feel like a nightmare
version of itself in recent weeks. But the current trajectory isn’t inevitable.
The lies can be called out, the real issues can be tackled, the hate can be
beaten. Again, it’s a choice, not just for this Thursday, but for a sustained
fightback in the months and years ahead.

About the author

David Wearing researches British-Saudi-Gulf relations at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, where he teaches courses on
politics and political economy in the Middle East. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWearing.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.

Support our campaign into #darkmoney

Theresa May is desperately clinging to power, relying on the DUP, the hard-right party that has blocked same-sex marriage, and kept abortion illegal.

Worse still, they're bankrolled by dark money – we've exposed the shady group behind their lavish pro-Brexit campaigning, but they're still refusing to name their secret donors. Now they hold the balance of power at Westminster, it's even more vital that we find out who their paymasters are.